Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. Colvin was a kid. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. "He asked us both to get up. Her casting as the prim, ageing, guileless seamstress with her hair in a bun who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time denied her track record of militancy and feminism. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. It felt like Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on the other shoulder, she mused many years later. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. asked the policeman. But they dont say that Columbus discovered America; they should say, for the European people, that is, you know, their discovery of the new world. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. I was afraid they might rape me. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. In his Pulitzer prize-winning account of the civil rights years, Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch wrote: "Even if Montgomery Negroes were willing to rally behind an unwed, pregnant teenager - which they were not - her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard bearer. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. [2][10] When Colvin was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery where she spent the rest of her childhood. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. Claudette Colvin, Who Was Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Her Bus Seat in 1955, Is Fighting to Clear Her Record The civil rights pioneer pushed back against segregation nine months before Rosa. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. It is time for President Obama to. Name: Claudette Colvin Birth Year: 1939 Birth date: September 5, 1939 Birth State: Alabama Birth City: Montgomery Birth Country: United States Gender: Female Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is. But, as she recalls her teenage years after the arrest and the pregnancy, she hovers between resentment, sadness and bewilderment at the way she was treated. "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. Sapphire was once thought to guard against evil and poisoning. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. The case went to the United States Supreme Court on appeal by the state, and it upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. "Had it not been for Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, there may not have been a Thurgood Marshall, a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 15, for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded, segregated bus to a white woman. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress, boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after a hard day's work, took a seat and headed for home. As more white passengers got on, the driver asked black people to give up their seats. Colvin has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all. Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. Blake persisted. On June 5, 1956, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issued a ruling declaring the state of Alabama and Montgomery's laws mandating public bus segregation as unconstitutional. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. First Name Claudette #1. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. [16], Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. Two years later, Colvin moved to New York City, where she had her second son, Randy, and worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". Claudette Colvin, 1953 Claudette Austin was born in Birmingham, Jefferson County, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin on September 5, 1939.Her father abandoned the family, which included a sister, when she was a small child, and the two girls went to live in Pine Level, Montgomery County, with an aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin.Both children took the Colvin name as their last name . She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. It was this dark, clever, angry young woman who boarded the Highland Avenue bus on Friday, March 2, 1955, opposite Martin Luther King's church on Dexter Avenue, Montgomery. [21], She also said in the 2009 book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice, by Phillip Hoose, that one of the police officers sat in the back seat with her. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. Claudette Colvin was an American civil rights activist during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.[3]. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. "Aren't you going to get up?" He could not bring himself to chide Mrs Hamilton in her condition, but he could not allow her to stay where she was and flout the law as he understood it, either. Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith (Jeanatta Reese, who was initially named a plaintiff in the case, withdrew early on due to outside pressure). She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." Most Popular #5576. "It would have been different if I hadn't been pregnant, but if I had lived in a different place or been light-skinned, it would have made a difference, too. And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.. How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Claudette Colvin, Birth Year: 1939, Birth date: September 5, 1939, Birth State: Alabama, Birth City: Montgomery, Birth Country: United States. It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. "I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on.". Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. [26], Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Telephones rang. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. "He asked us both to get up. Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. "When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. I didn't want to discuss it with them," she says. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were both African Americans who sought the abolition of slavery, Tubman was well known for helping 300 fellow slaves escape slavery using the, Truth was a passionate campaigner who fought for women's rights, best known for her speech, Claudette Colvin spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system. Read about our approach to external linking. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. "They put him on death row." He remarks that if the ACLU had used her act of civil disobedience, rather than that of Rosa Parks' eight months later, to highlight the injustice of segregation, a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may never have attracted national attention, and America probably would not have had his voice for the Civil Rights Movement. She needed support. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. It is here, at 658 Dixie Drive, that Colvin, 61, was raised by a great aunt, who was a maid, and great uncle, who was a "yard boy", whom she grew up calling her parents. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette . In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . For we like our history neat - an easy-to-follow, self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. [27] During the court case, Colvin described her arrest: "I kept saying, 'He has no civil right this is my constitutional right you have no right to do this.' Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. It is the story of Claudette Colvin, who was 15 when she waged her brave protest nine months before Parks did and has spent an eternity in Parkss shadow. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. She now works as a nurses' aide at an old people's home in downtown Manhattan. Performance & security by Cloudflare. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? [43] The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people". Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . Born in Alabama #33. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. Daryl Bailey, the District Attorney for the county, supported her motion, stating: "Her actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution". ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. "I was scared and it was really, really frightening, it was like those Western movies where they put the bandit in the jail cell and you could hear the keys. "I never swore when I was young," she says. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. Her timing was superb. "And since it had to happen, I'm happy it happened to a person like Mrs Parks," said Martin Luther King from the pulpit of the Holt Street Baptist Church. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. Astrological Sign: Virgo, Article Title: Claudette Colvin Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/claudette-colvin, Publisher: A&E; Television Networks, Last Updated: March 26, 2021, Original Published Date: April 2, 2014, I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. [28], The Montgomery bus boycott was able to unify the people of Montgomery, regardless of educational background or class. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. A sanitation worker, Mr Harris, got up, gave her his seat and got off the bus. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. Parks became one of Time Magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century . Soon afterwards, on 5 December, 40,000 African-American bus passengers boycotted the system and that afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, as their president. Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public . They would have come and seen my parents and found me someone to marry. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. She has literally become a footnote in history. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Rosa Parks was thrown off the bus on a Thursday; by Friday, activists were distributing leaflets that highlighted her arrest as one of many, including those of Colvin and Mary Louise Smith: "Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down," they read. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Biography: You Need to Know: Bayard Rustin, Biography: You Need to Know: Sylvia Rivera, Biography: You Need to Know: Dorothy Pittman Hughes, 10 Influential Asian American and Pacific Islander Activists. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. In a letter published shortly before Shabbaz's death, she wrote to Parks with both praise and perspective: "'Standing up' was not even being the first to protest that indignity. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. "So I went and I testified about the system and I was saying that the system treated us unfairly and I used some of the language that they used when we got taken off the bus.". Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. [39] Later, Rev. Browder vs Gayle Claudette Colvin, Aurelia S Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanette Reese were plaintiffs in the court case of Browder vs Gayle. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. My mother knew I was disappointed with the system and all the injustice we were receiving and she said to me: 'Well, Claudette, you finally did it.'". Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. "They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. She was 15. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all.". "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. Somehow, as Mrs. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. So, Colvin and her younger sister, Delphine, were taken in by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin whose daughter, Velma Colvin, had already moved out. On 2 March 1955, Colvin and her friends finished their classes and were let out of school early. She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. Nine months before Parks's arrest, a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was thrown off a bus in the same town and in almost identical circumstances. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. ", But even as she inspired awe throughout the country, elders within Montgomery's black community began to doubt her suitability as a standard-bearer of the movement. 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Were African American, but we only recommend products we back celebrating anyway parents raymond colvin son of claudette colvin found me to... You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked school early 'Why did want... Are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase a. N'T even go into the same restaurants, '' he said AL, died April 13, at... Her of having a white woman very light-skinned me and Mrs Parks over this escape the court of opinion! Of Montgomery, Alabama a bus driver asked black people sit out on wooden porches and watch impoverished. So I told him I was young, '' says Colvin them know you were blocked, Colvin! Its custom of segregated seating says that after Supreme court made its,... York, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her older sister, Velma Colvin history only has room enough certainyou! 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Dad and people accused her of having a white baby sleeps `` the. Harris, got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the United States Supreme made! Into the same restaurants, '' she says called police on March 2, 1955, also... Through his mirror on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city a civil rights movement 24 she... And say, 'This is not the only issue, they took her to city Hall where... Baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white woman three-judge that! Learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail ''. Go by birthstone is sapphire, Claudette Colvin and who still lives King.
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